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Governments around the world set a new record in bureaucracy busting efforts for the domestic private sector, implementing 314 business reforms over the past year, says the World Bank Group’s Doing Business 2019.

We engage the development community with real-world statistics

The total external debt of low- and middle-income countries rose 10 percent in 2017 to $7.1 trillion, a faster pace of debt accumulation than the 4 percent increase in 2016, according to the International Debt Statistics 2019. Regional level trends in external debt in 2017 accumulation varied. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa accumulated external debt at a faster pace than low- and middle-income countries in other regions in 2017: the combined external debt stock rose 15.5 percent from the previous year to $535 billion.

Much of this increase was driven by a sharp rise in borrowing by two of the region's largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, where the external debt stock rose 29 percent and 21 percent respectively. Read More.

Recognizing the incompleteness of the so called monetary measure of well-being, this year’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report proposes a multidimensional poverty measure. It adds deprivations in education (child school enrollment and adult school attainment) and access to basic infrastructure (drinking water, sanitation and electricity) to the consumption measure to construct a more complete picture of poverty. With this broader definition of poverty, many more people come into view as poor. Read More.

Between June 2, 2017, and May 1 this year, 128 governments introduced a record 314 reforms benefitting small and medium business and entrepreneurs, enabling job creation, and stimulating private investment. These reforms are tracked – and inspired – by the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Index ranking 190 countries on the ease of doing business within their borders. Read More.